held a fan, while her escort, leaning against his chair, his hat pushed back, his legs spread apart, was obdurately sucking his cane's head.
An uncontrollable feeling of disgust rose within me; I was ashamed of being here, and I compared the ridiculous and noisy manners of these women with the reserved deportment of the gentle Juliette at Lirat's studio. These raucous and piercing voices rendered even more suave the freshness of her voice, the voice which I still heard saying to me: "Delighted, Monsieur! But I know you well." I arose.
"What a scoundrel this Lirat is, all the same," I exclaimed while getting into bed, furious at the fact that he had so treated a young woman whom I had met neither on the street, at the Bois, in the restaurant, at the theatre, nor at the night cabaret.
CHAPTER IV
"Madame Juliette Roux, if you please?"
"Will Monsieur please come in?" the maid asked.
Without demanding my name or waiting for my answer, she made me cross a small, dark antechamber, and led me into a room where at first I could only distinguish a lamp covered by a large lamp-shade, which burned low in a corner. The maid raised the flame of the lamp and carried out an otter skin cape which had been thrown on the sofa.
"I will go tell madame," she said.
And she disappeared, leaving me alone in the room.
So I was at her house! For eight days the thought of this visit had tortured me. I had no special business, I simply wanted to see Juliette; some kind of keen curiosity, which I did not stop to analyze, drew me to her. Several times I had gone to the Rue Saint Petersbourg with the firm intention of calling on her, but at the last moment my nerve failed me, and I left without mustering sufficient courage to cross her threshold. And now I was the most embarrassed being in the world, and I regretted my foolish step, for obviously it was a foolish step. How would she receive me? What should I say? What caused me the greatest uneasiness was that after I had made a thorough search in my brain I found not a single phrase, not a single word with which to begin our conversation when Juliette entered. What if words should fail me and I should be left standing here with gaping mouth! How ridiculous that would be!
I examined the room into which Juliette was presently to come. It was a dressing room which also served as a parlor. It made a rather unfavorable impression on me. The toilet table, ostentatiously displayed with its two wash basins of cracked, pink cut glass, shocked me. The walls and ceiling, hung with loud red satin, the furniture, bordered with elaborate plush hangings, the knick-knacks, costly and ugly, placed here and there on the furniture, the queer tables serving no apparent purpose, consols weighed down with heavy ornaments—all this bespoke a vulgar taste. I noticed in the center of the mantlepiece, between two massive vases of onyx, a terra cotta statuette of Cupid, smiling with a sort of grimace and offering a flower held at the tips of his outspread fingers. Every detail revealed, on the one hand, a love of expensive and unrefined luxury, and on the other a regrettable predilection for romance and puerile affection. It was at once distressing and sentimental. Nevertheless, and that was a relief to me, I saw here no evidence of that incongruity, that transitory air, that severity of aspect so characteristic of ladies' boarding houses, those apartments where one is made aware of a haggard existence, where by the number of knick-knacks one can count the number of lovers who have passed there, lovers for an hour, a night, a year; where every chair tells of the lack of decency, the unfaithfulness; where on the glass one can see the tragedy of fortune's fickleness; on the marble, traces of a tear still warm; on the candlestick, blood drops still moist. The door opened and Juliette appeared wearing a white, long flowing dress. I trembled, color came to my face; but she recognized me and, smiling that smile of hers which at last I found again, she stretched out her hand.
"Ah! Monsieur Mintié!" she said, "how nice of you not to have forgotten me! Has it been long since you saw that eccentric Lirat?"
"Why, yes, Madame, I have not seen him since the day I had the honor of meeting you at his place."
"Ah, my God, I thought you two never separated at all."
"It is true," I replied, "that I see him quite often. But I have been working all these days."
As I thought I detected a note of irony in the sound of her voice, I added, to provoke her:
"What a great artist, isn't he?"
Juliette let this remark pass unanswered.
"So you are always working?" She took up the subject again. "For the rest, I am told you live like a regular recluse. Really, one sees very little of you, Monsieur Mintié!"
The conversation took a quite ordinary turn, the theatre furnishing food for nearly all of it. A remark which I made seemed to astound her, and she was rather scandalized.
"What, you don't like the theatre? Is it possible—and you an artist? I am passionately fond of it. The theatre is so amusing! We are going to the Varieté tonight, for the fourth time, mind you."
A feeble yelp came from behind the door.
"Ah, my God!" Juliette exclaimed, hurriedly rising. "My Spy whom I left in my room! Shall I present Spy to you, Monsieur Mintié? Don't you know Spy?"
She opened the door, drew aside the hangings, which were very wide.
"Come, Spy!" she said coaxingly. "Where have you been, Spy? Come over here, poor thing!"
And I saw a diminutive little animal, with a pointed snout, long ears, advancing, dancing on its thin paws that resembled a spider's legs and whose whole body, bent and skinny, quivered as though in fever. A ribbon of red silk, carefully tied on the side, encircled its neck in place of a collar.
"Come on, Spy. Say hello to Monsieur Mintié!"
Spy turned on me his round, stupid and cruel eyes which were on a level with his head, and barked viciously.
"That's right, Spy. Now give your paw. Will you give me your paw? Come, now!"
Juliette bent down and threatened the dog with her finger. Spy finally put his paw in his mistress' hand. She picked him up, patted and embraced him.
"Oh! the dear little dog! Oh, darling dog! Oh, my love, my dearest Spy!"
She sat up again, still holding the dog in her arms like a child, rubbing her cheek against the snout of the frightful beast, whispering caressing and endearing words into his ears.
"Now show us that you are pleased, Spy! Show it to your little mammy!"
Spy barked again, then licked the lips of Juliette who joyously abandoned herself to these odious caresses.
"Ah, what a dear you are, Spy! Ah, how very, very nice you are!"
And addressing herself to me, whom she seemed to have forgotten completely since Spy's unfortunate entry, she suddenly asked:
"Do you like dogs, Monsieur Mintié?"
"Very much, Madame," I answered.
Then she told me, with a wealth of childish detail, the history of Spy, his habits, his urgent needs, his tricks, the scraps with the housekeeper who could not
